This invention relates to corrosion monitoring and measurement and, more particularly, to system for detecting galvanic corrosion in an environment, and for amplifying, integrating and storing in a memory for future recall the amount and/or the rate of galvanic current that is flowing (and that has flowed) when galvanic corrosion is being (and has been) detected.
The visual inspection for corrosion of an item (or of a constituent component thereof) by personnel is subjective, can be time consuming and, therefore, expensive and ineffectual, depending upon the configuration of the item, its location and/or positioning, and the expertise of the inspecting personnel. For example, in an aircraft or an aircraft system there are many places where items (hereinafter referred to as "hardware") are corroding or are apt to corrode, and to which said places inspecting personnel cannot readily gain access. These places are, for all practical purposes, inaccessible routinely and can make inspection of an item therein for corrosion extremely difficult, if not impossible.
The results of undetected corrosion, or of detecting corrosion too late, can be the destruction of hardware which then requires replacement that, in turn, can be costly, because of the labor involved, the cost of the hardware to be replaced, and in some cases the loss of use of the equipment of which the corroded hardware is a necessary constituent. In addition, undetected corrosion processes may lead to, or actually cause, dangerous situations.
Therefore, what is needed in the art and is not presently available, is some means for detecting corrosion, and for objectively measuring the amount and rate of the corrosion, of hardware that is otherwise very difficult or impossible to inspect visually, so that timely corrective action can be taken to prolong the life of, rather than to replace, the corroding hardware.
We have invented such a means in the form of a corrosion monitoring system which has a remotely positionable sensor; and, thereby, we have advanced the state-of-the-art.